As bit-areal densities in magnetic recording continue to progress in an effort to increase the storage capacity of hard disc drives, magnetic transition (bit) dimensions and, concomitantly, recording head critical features are being pushed below 100 nm. In a parallel effort, to make the recording medium stable at higher areal densities, magnetically harder (high coercivity) medium materials are required. Traditionally, writing to a harder medium has been achieved by increasing the saturation magnetization, or 4πMs value, of the magnetic material comprising the inductive write head, thus bolstering the magnetic field applied to the medium. Though there has been some success in materials research efforts to increase Ms of the write head, the rate of increase is not significant enough to sustain the annual growth rate of bit-areal densities in disc storage. Further, continued increases in Ms are likely unsustainable as the materials reach their fundamental limits. A consequence of higher areal densities is an increase in data rates. Data rates are advancing toward a GHz and beyond, where it becomes increasingly difficult to switch the magnetization of the recording medium using a conventional write field applied anti-parallel to the magnetization direction. Thus, there is a need for a writing process capable of switching higher coercivity media at increasingly high data rates.